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(CNN) -
President Donald Trump still cannot accept the numbers that measure his loss to Joe Biden: more than 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes.
But another set of numbers is one more affront to his psychological injury.
Figures show that, despite the myriad of lies he has told, such as the ones he tells about electoral fraud, Trump will leave office in January with a historically poor record in terms of the economy.
That sounds jarring as many Americans believe in the economic fable that Trump has relentlessly repeated throughout his tenure.
But putting his final results alongside those of his predecessors paints a deeply unflattering portrait.
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Trump is the only one of 13 presidents since World War II to leave the White House with fewer employed Americans than when he began his term.
He will have overseen more insignificant growth in economic output than any of the 12 previous presidents.
His "America First" agenda has failed to restore the old economic engine that fueled the prosperity of an earlier era.
Under Trump's leadership, industrial production has fallen.
The Federal Reserve says the manufacturing sector entered a recession in 2019 even before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
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Last week was the thirty-eighth in a row that at least 700,000 Americans filed for jobless benefits for the first time.
The lines of food banks during the Christmas season dramatize the magnitude of human suffering.
More abstract measures such as the US trade deficit and the relationship between public debt and the size of the economy have also worsened during Trump's term.
"Trump's economic record ranks near or bottom compared to other presidents," concludes Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi, who compared the economic performance of all presidents over the past 70 years.
"The economy under his supervision has performed very badly."
Without a doubt, the deadliest public health pandemic in a century has devastated economic activity during the last year of the president's term.
But responding to an unexpected catastrophe - from hurricanes to terrorist attacks, civil unrest and financial crises - takes a big part of the job.
And, as Zandi points out, Trump's failed response to the coronavirus has exacerbated and extended the damage to jobs and production.
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Trump's track record before the pandemic
Trump's track record offered little legitimate reason to brag before the pandemic.
The persistent growth in production and the decline in the unemployment rate during its first three years amplified the recovery trends from the Great Recession that it inherited from President Barack Obama.
Growth accelerated in early 2018 following Trump's only major legislative achievement, the tax cuts he and Republicans in Congress enacted.
But that didn't last long with the economy already nearing full employment and the budget deficit increased.
A temporary increase in investment was mainly due to the increase in energy prices.
"It didn't provide any long-term benefits," says Zandi.
The counterproductive tariff wars that Trump quickly started offset any short-term benefits from the tax cuts and the administration's deregulation push.
That is why Trump, to avoid further damaging the economy in his reelection year, called a truce with China in January without obtaining the structural reforms that he had demanded of Beijing.
Trump previously scrapped influence by leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership with allies that the Obama administration had negotiated.
Among Trump's "very serious political mistakes," Zandi said, are his attacks on national and international institutions.
They include "actively trying to undermine" the Fed's independence.
Financial markets versus the real world
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Trump can pinpoint above-average financial market gains.
As of November, the S&P 500 had risen an average of 14.34% a year during his tenure, slightly more than Obama's 12.43%.
But those gains have been largely driven by soaring interest rates, leading investors to invest in stocks in search of higher returns.
And the benefits of those gains accrue largely to the wealthiest Americans who own the majority of the stocks.
The president can also cite an above-average 3.32% annual increase in real disposable income per capita.
But that average hides the extent of those gains that flowed to the wealthy, who benefited disproportionately from his tax cuts.
As a candidate in 2016, Trump defended the beleaguered workers whom he called "the forgotten Americans."
Their policies have not closed the gap between them and the economic elites.
As of the third quarter of 2020, Zandi says, the least wealthy 50% of Americans own just 1.9% of the nation's net worth, while the richest 1% own 30.5%.
Growing promises from the pandemic exacerbate that disparity before Trump leaves office.
When the Labor Department issues the final monthly employment report for his presidency in early January, Zandi expects it to show a further decline in employment.
In the first quarter of 2021, when Trump cedes power to Biden, Wall Street firm JPMorgan predicts that economic output will decline.
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